Thursday, November 29, 2012

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

I decided to post my review of The Truth About Forever, even though Flo has already reviewed it, because our opinions are DRASTICALLY different.

This story is about a high school girl named Macy and her mother, who are still struggling with the sudden death of Macy's father, which occurred a year and a half prior to the start of the book. Instead of living their lives, they have established a routine. Both her mother and her boyfriend Jason are control freaks. They want everything in their lives to be perfect. For her mother, it is a defense mechanism. Rather than deal with her feelings of loss she has thrown herself into her work and expects nothing short of perfection from both herself and her daughter.

We learn throughout this book that perfection is not necessarily desirable. Once Macy meets a team of caterers (Delia, Bert, Wes, Monica, and Kristy) and starts working for them, she sees what has been missing from her life since her father's death. She finally develops true friendships and begins to live her life on her own terms. Catering is a very chaotic business and she soon thrives in dealing with the unexpected.

One night, Wes and Macy begin a game of truth. It is like truth or dare, but there are no dares. They ask each other questions and the only rule is that they must tell the truth. The game continues whenever they are together and they become very close friends. They learn that they have far more in common with one another than Macy first thought. They are both in relationships that are sort of on hold, so there isn't any pressure on their relationship. Macy feels that they are just really good friends, but she eventually can't deny that her feelings for him are more than that, but is it too late?

I really enjoy Sarah Dessen's style of writing and found this to be another exceptional story. Both of her books that I have read have had a wonderful message to them. The characters are far from perfect, but they all have so much personality. I will definitely read another one of her books and I would highly recommend this one. I gave it 4 stars on GoodReads, but it is really worth 4.5 stars. If there was a little more Noah Shaw or Lucas Delos to this story, I definitely would have given it 5 stars. A little more detail towards the end of the book about the love story is all that was needed for me to give it 5 stars.